... a chain [at least five miles long] of nine peculiar looking aircraft ... were approaching Mt. Rainier very rapidly, and I merely assumed they were jet planes. ... I watched these objects with great interest as I had never before observed airplanes flying so close to the mountain tops ... Their speed at the time did not impress me particularly, because I knew that our army and air forces had planes that went very fast. ... What kept bothering me [however,] was the fact that I couldn't make out any tail on them, ... The more I observed these objects the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying ... Even at the time this timing [of 1 min 42 s] did not upset me as I felt confident after I would land there would be some explanation of what I saw. ... I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something[, there] is no reason that it does not exist. Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the FBI as to the authenticity of my story ..., I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country ...

… well, right here we’ve seen something, I’ve seen something, hundreds of pilots have seen something … in the skies. We have dutifully reported these things. And we have to have 15 million witnesses before anybody is going to look into the problem … seriously? Well this is utterly fantastic. This is more fantastic than flying saucers or people from Venus or anything as far as I am concerned.

A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.

Nine flying saucers, in loose formation, were seen by Captain E. Smith, of United Airlines, eight minutes flying time away from Boise, Idaho, on 4 July 1947. Smith and his copilot, Ralph Stevens, saw the disks silhouetted against the late-evening sky, and at first thought they were aircraft. Notice, please, that they were ‘silhouetted’. Fireballs, illusions, and refractions of light do not produce dark silhouettes against the evening, or any other, sky. Four more saucers joined the group, giving the two pilots and their stewardess time to observe them thoroughly.

In 1945-46... & so on... ordinary airline pilots, crew & passengers would see would see outside their planes... these extraordinary dome shaped... ships... and no one knew where they came from... no one knew what they were. In the beginning most the... governments thought... the Russians thought they were made by the Americans. The Americans thought they were made by the Russians... no one knew precisely how they came to be there, what they were doing and how they had this extraordinary freedom of the air, this ability to appear and disappear and to go at fantastic speeds way out of sight of the planes that they had stood beside for a few minutes... For a few years it was an unexplainable phenomenon. We made jokes about it. Flying saucers... no one knew...

... I looked at my watch and it showed one minute and 42 seconds. Well, I felt that was pretty fast and I didn't stop to think what the distance was between the two mountains. ... they sure must have had a tailwind, but it didn't seem to help me much. But to the best of my knowledge, and the best of my description, that is what I actually saw, [and,] like I told the Associated Press, [I'd] be glad to confirm it with my hands on a Bible because I did see it, and whether it has anything to do with our army or our intelligence or whether it has to do with some foreign country, I don't know. But I did see it and I did clock it and I just happened to be in a beautiful position to do it and it's just as much a mystery to me as it is to everyone else who's been calling me the last 24 hours, wondering what it was.

From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.
They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.

Have you ever fall'n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe them but in Motion, — gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely a part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and stay-sails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd?

If an ancient man saw planes two thousand years ago, he would've thought they were birds or angels from another world.

Once again, we can be sure that these Canadian blue-green-purple globes are not meteors, nor are they fragments of a comet or Venus. What, then, are they? Spacecraft from another world?

At altitudes of 6000 to 16,000 feet, and with wind velocities reaching 45 miles an hour, many living insects have been taken.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing—them.

Some things that fly there be, — Birds, hours, the bumble-bee: